


Try Our Best to Fly

by WynterSky



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, hoping to figure out somewhere to fit tim in eventually, wildly unresearched comic book amnesia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-02-29 09:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18775738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WynterSky/pseuds/WynterSky
Summary: Batman swears off partners after Robin is killed in an accident. Damian Wayne wages a campaign to make his father acknowledge him. Jason Todd tries to make a living on the streets of Gotham. Why is an amnesiac foster teen from Metropolis letting himself get dragged into all this, again?





	1. Prologue: the end

**Prologue: the end**

In the end, it isn’t a desperate showdown with any of Batman’s enemies. No last stand, nothing to blame, no one to take revenge on.

It’s cold in Gotham—nearly Christmas.

At Wayne Manor, earlier that day, they had all rearranged the furniture in the main parlor to fit a huge tree Bruce would pick out from the woods before the next morning. He never lets Dick join him on those expeditions. “I know you’ve found almost all the presents I’ve been hiding,” he’d said when Dick asked him that morning. “At least let me preserve one surprise.”

He wasn’t wrong about the presents, either. Dick couldn’t wait to unwrap the new Xbox he knew was currently sitting at the bottom of a crate of batarangs. But right now he has a mission to concentrate on.

Bruce Wayne is stuck at an office Christmas party for Wayne Tech staff, so Robin is alone tonight. Not that he has anything to worry about; it’s only a routine surveillance run, so he’ll be finished and back at the manor even before Alfred goes to bed. All he has to do is take a few photos of a manufacturing plant next to the river, so that Batman can plan a more detailed stakeout later.

It’s cold in Gotham, after midnight.

Robin is glad for the gloves of his night-colored stealth costume as he sits on a warehouse roof, across the train tracks from the manufacturing plant. He’s in a hurry to get home and wheedle Alfred into making hot chocolate.

He takes a few photos from his perch, but it’s too far, and the angle on the back entrance of the factory is no good. He has to get closer.

He grabs the grappling gun from his belt—he doesn’t feel how cold the metal has become through his gloves—and fires it at the adjacent roof of the manufacturing plant.

The cable catches on the edge of the roof, where wear from winter rains has left jagged, exposed metal.

On the downswing, there is a sharp snap from the cold-brittle cable.

A train whistle.

And Robin is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Blows dust off ancient account*  
> 5 years and I still get most of my titles from Kate Rusby lyrics...  
> This is my first stab at a Batman fanfic so I hope you like it. I'm kind of just doing whatever I like so any resemblance to the actual comics timeline, such as it has one, is completely accidental.


	2. Chapter 1

_now_

Jake isn’t sure why he tries talking to the boy at the zoo. He doesn’t talk to people much, as a rule—it doesn’t tend to go anywhere, not in his state. Conversations usually just go in circles until the other person gives up

It’s only the two of them near the elephant enclosure. Jake isn’t sure why he’s drawn to elephants; irony, maybe. The kid with the messed-up internal hard drive and the animal that never forgets.

The other boy is standing a few yards away, trying to look over the high bushes surrounding the enclosure without...looking like he’s trying to look. What’s such a small kid doing out of school on a weekday, Jake wonders, and then realizes he’s wearing a Gotham Prep uniform.

That’s interesting. Jake’s only met a few people from Gotham—despite how close the two cities are, there isn’t that much commuting, and Jake lives on the far side of Metropolis. Still, he’s always been a bit intrigued by the city across the harbor. Well. As far back as he can remember, anyway. Well. According to his notes.

“Need a better view?” he asks, walking over to the other boy.

The kid gives him a sharp look—Jake realizes the hoodie and sunglasses probably don’t make him look like the most trustworthy person. Not his fault he ended up photosensitive after years in a hospital. Jake pulls his hood back and smiles.

“I am fine,” the kid says finally, tilting his chin up a little. The stubborn expression on the tiny face is very cute. He can’t be more than ten.

Jake looks at the kid, then over at the bushes and the fence again. “Fine,” he repeats.

“...Mostly. Mostly fine.”

* * *

Damian isn’t sure why he started talking to the boy at the zoo; even less sure why he let him pick him up, of all things, as if he was an ordinary child and not a highly trained assassin.

Right now the boy’s standing on the bottom rung of the wooden fence, holding Damian around the waist as he stands on the middle rung. Demeaning it might be, but he does have a very good angle to film the elephants from.

“So you don’t have any zoos in Gotham to use for your science project?” the boy is asking. Damian should probably ask him for his name. That’s what you’re supposed to do, when you talk to people. He doesn’t talk to very many people besides Alfred.

“Everyone’s going to the Gotham Zoo,” Damian says. “My project will never stand out that way.” More importantly, _Grayson_ would go to the Gotham Zoo. Damian generally tries to avoid those places.

There’s a lot of Gotham that he tries to avoid.

“Is it true that Gotham Prep is in a castle?” the boy asks.

Damian shrugs. “Not a _real_ castle.” This is probably for the best; he’s stayed in real castles and did not enjoy the experience. “It’s just a mansion that was donated to the city, back in the sixties.” Grayson hadn’t gone to Gotham Prep. Grayson had tutors at the manor.

So what if the manor is one of the places he tries to avoid.

“Lame.”

The boy jumps down off the fence, leaving Damian holding the top rung for balance. “Need help getting down?” he says, but Damian ignores him, springing off the fence and pivoting off a trashcan to spin and land facing the other boy. “Oh. Okay. So you could have done that the whole time, huh?”

“My name is Damian,” Damian says, holding out a hand. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you meet people.

Best to leave his last name for another time, if there is one.

* * *

Jake looks down at the kid, trying not to grin at the incongruity of the formal introduction from such a little kid. “Hi, Damian,” he says, shaking his hand and trying to match his serious expression. “I’m Jake. Jake Larking. Photo?”

Damian blinks at him, starting to look suspicious as he takes his phone out. “Never mind,” Jake says quickly, shoving it back in his pocket. No need to go into the whole sob story about his vanished past and ruined short-term memory right now. He’s probably never going to run into the kid again anyway.

Still, it’s nice to have proof of things. Something to actually look at, besides his notes.

“Do you want to see the aviary? You can feed the parakeets if you want.”

Damian shakes his head. “No birds,” he says. “Are there tigers? I like tigers.”

“I’m sure we’ve got some lying around somewhere,” Jake says. “Come on, I’ll find a map.”

Things blank out, somewhere between the elephants and the information stand.

Now he’s standing in front of a stand of bamboo, holding a map and looking down at a little green-eyed kid. When did that happen?

They stand there staring at each other for a few seconds.

“What?” says the kid.

“What?” says Jake.

“You were going to show me the tigers.”

“...Oh?” That’s news to him.

Jake pulls his phone out to check his notes. Nothing about a kid, but the last time he entered anything was more than two hours ago, when he arrived at the zoo. No photos of the kid, either.

The kid is definitely looking at him weird now, because he’s really doing a _great_ job at acting like a normal person. Maybe he can distract him until something filters back in.

Or maybe he can just take the plunge.

“So…”

The kid looks at him expectantly.

There’s never really a good way to phrase this. “So I have no idea how I met you, actually.” Blank stare. Then a sharp little frown. Okay, maybe there aren’t good ways, but there are better ways, and that certainly wasn’t one. “Honest,” Jake says. “It’s like a short-term memory...thing. Or well. It isn’t. Because my short-term memory doesn’t really work. Which is the problem.” Very clear and succinct, that was.

“Oh.” The kid nods a little, as if this makes sense. “Is that why you wanted to take a picture?”

“Yeah.”

“We were at the elephants,” the kid says. “You were helping me get video of them for my science project.”

“Science project.” Now something clicks again. About time. “...Damian, right?” He remembers his little parkour stunt, too, which is good because that would have been a shame to forget.

“Yes.” Damian tugs at the map Jake is holding, so that it’s a level he can see. “Take me to the tigers now.”

The rest of the afternoon goes surprisingly well, although Damian is certainly a demanding little kid—it feels like he’s dragged Jake through half the zoo by the time he’s satisfied, as well as making Jake play cameraman for his science project.

Still, it’s nice actually interacting with someone who doesn’t give up the first time his memory glitches out. Damian barely even seems fazed by it, once Jake explains. Maybe it’s because he’s from Gotham. A lot of weird stuff happens in Gotham, apparently.

“Do you want a pretzel or something?” Jake stops at a snack cart and calls to Damian, who runs over from the glass crocodile exhibit. “My treat.”

Damian’s eyebrows go up a little bit, and then he reaches into the pocket of his Gotham Prep jacket and comes out with, of all things, a black credit card. “Mine, actually.”

This day couldn’t get any stranger if Superman showed up. Jake glances up in the sky, just to check.


	3. Chapter 2

Jake doesn’t remember it happening, but at some point before Damian left the zoo he ended up with a photo of him, and his number in his contacts. He discovers it the next day—Damian looks a lot more like a normal little kid in the photo, squinting a little in the sun and with cinnamon sugar all over his face from the pretzel.

Damian Wayne, the name in his contacts says.

As in, the son of Bruce Wayne.

The Bruce Wayne, who basically owns half of Gotham.

And he’d tried to treat the kid to pretzels.

Maybe that had been the right move somehow, because they seem to be becoming friends. Damian appears in his notes more and more, even though he doesn’t always remember their meetings. More photos of him appear in his camera roll too; awkward selfies, baffled looks (Damian has no idea how to react when told ‘say cheese!’ Jake discovers), and more natural candid shots. He looks more his age when he doesn’t realize anyone is watching him.

They’re probably both a bit lonely—don’t really fit in.

The atmosphere at Jake’s group home is nice, but nobody really invests a lot of time in developing a relationship with him. He can see why, after all, not a lot of point if he isn’t going to remember most of it, but still. It’s nice to have someone to hang out with besides his vague sort-of friends at school.

Damian doesn’t talk a lot about himself, or his family. When he does it’s distant and formal: he calls his father ‘Bruce’ and his adopted older brother ‘Grayson’. Sometimes he complains about how childish the other students in his class at Gotham Prep are.

“Well, you’re a ‘child’ too,” Jake points out.

“I’m very mature for my age,” Damian protests, between mouthfuls of frozen lemonade. He isn’t in his Gotham Prep uniform, since it’s the weekend. Instead he’s wearing a Pokemon shirt he claims the butler purchased and which he ‘is _only_ wearing in order not to offend him’.

“I can see that.”

“Right? Anyway, fourth grade is _insufferable_. I should be in _Yale_ but B...nobody will listen to me.”

They’re not in Metropolis today. Usually Damian wants to get out of Gotham, but Jake’s always wanted a look around the other city and this month there’s an exhibition of Middle Eastern art that Damian wants to see, so he grudgingly agreed to meeting at the park next to the art gallery. Right now they’re sitting next to the fountain, drinking slushies from a food truck.

Jake likes Gotham, what he’s seen of it, anyway. Metropolis has always been too bright for him, too open, the gleaming towers and domes a little too much. But then, maybe that’s why Damian likes it, after living in Gotham with its narrow streets and old brick buildings covered with dark ironwork accents.

“Come on, Daims,” Jake says, slurping up the rest of his lime slushie. “Let’s go look at some art.”

“It’s Dam-i-an,” Damian corrects him, but Jake doesn’t miss his amused little huff.

“Sure, Daims.”

They walk into the gallery and Damian freezes.

Batman is swooping down from the glass ceiling, with Robin just behind him. Jake and Damian stare up at the massive mural of Gotham’s two heroes that takes up most of the museum’s two-story lobby.

“Wow,” Jake says.

“Hmph.”

“More of a Superman person?”

“Superheroes are for _children._ ”

“What about Robin? He is...he was…before he quit, or whatever...”

“ _Don’t._ ” Damian’s voice is tight.

“Alright, alright,” Jake says quickly. “Don’t blow up at me, it’s not like I’m a superhero or anything. Gosh.”

Damian looks away from the mural as they walk through the lobby into the main gallery, and Jake quickly steers him past the room of superhero-themed pop art towards the Middle Eastern section. Whatever he has against Batman, it must make it hard to live in Gotham—pictures of the guy are everywhere. No wonder he keeps running off to Metropolis.

Once they reach the exhibition of Persian miniatures, Damian calms down quickly, and is soon dragging Jake from case to case, regaling him with information on the techniques of the artists and complaining about inaccuracies in the museum labels. Jake doesn’t understand the half of it, but it clearly makes Damian happy to have someone actually paying attention to what he has to say.

It’s been a good day, all around. Not even any memory episodes to disrupt things. He’s been slowly improving over the last few months, although he still doesn’t remember anything before the accident. Maybe having something he actually cares about is helping, instead of just drifting.

“About time to pack it in, Daims,” he says finally. “I want to catch the subway back to Metropolis before it gets dark. You should get home too, you know.”

Damian sighs. “Fine. I suppose Alfred will worry if I don’t.”

They leave through the giftshop, in an unspoken agreement to avoid the lobby and the mural. Jake finds a postcard of one of the miniatures to take home, then takes advantage of the fact the shelves are higher than Damian’s eye level to sneak to the cash register before the kid can get there with his black credit card. It doesn’t feel right making him pay for everything—Jake’s not exactly wealthy but he’s not about to take advantage of a ten-year-old who still hasn’t figured out how friends work.

Damian stops short just as they reach the bottom of the steps down to the sidewalk.

“What?” Jake asks, following the angle of Damian’s glare until he sees another boy about his own age, leaning against a black car. “Who…?”

“ _Grayson,_ ” Damian grinds out.


	4. Chapter 3

“Is something wrong?” Jake asks, looking between Damian and the other boy. Grayson, he’d said. This must be the brother, the one who only comes home from boarding school a few times a year.

Damian is practically vibrating with anger. “What are you doing here,” he growls.

“Alfred told me you were here,” Grayson says, pushing away from the car and walking over. “I came to say hi. Is this your new friend?”

Jake steps forward, holding out a hand. “Jake Larking. Hi.”

“Richard Grayson.”

Grayson gives him an odd look as they shake hands. Jake has certainly earned some suspicion—a highschool student starting up a friendship with a kid barely over half his age is admittedly odd—but it isn’t that kind of look. He looks sad, almost.

Jake and Grayson are around the same age, probably—Jake only has an approximate idea how old he is—and would probably resemble each other somewhat if Jake dressed better and cut his hair (he hasn’t had it short since the accident, trying to hide some of the scarring). His build is a bit lighter than Jake's, but still athletic.

Damian folds his arms. He’s glaring in a way that could kill a cat nine times over.

No wonder he doesn’t like Gotham, if this is what the atmosphere at home is like.

“Do you want a ride, Damian?” Grayson asks, motioning back towards the car.

“I’ll take the bus,” Damian snaps, and is off and running down the street before either of them can say anything else.

Grayson sighs. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to ruin his day. Can I drop you anywhere?”

“No thanks,” Jake says. “The subway is only a few blocks away.”

Grayson is still giving him that look. “Alright,” he says finally. “See you around, maybe.”

Jake watches the car drive off.

Something feels wrong about it.

He ignores the feeling—his brain is constantly grasping at straws, trying to make the fragments of his memories fit together somehow, and if he tried to follow up on whatever patterns it managed to find he’d drive himself into the ground. It’s exhausting. He gave up on hunches and feelings years ago.

* * *

The boy in the car sighs, slouching down in the back of the Mercedes. The phone in his pocket is buzzing. He checks to make sure the barrier to the driver’s seat is closed before answering.

“You know I hate doing this, Mr. Wayne.”

“I know. But it’s necessary that you two are seen together in a situation besides a staged event. The art gallery is a high-traffic public area, and there are plenty of security cameras. Damian’s new acquaintance saw you too, if there’s ever a need for a witness.”

“Right. Him.” There had been something about him...but probably it was just the odd coincidence of it, Damian fixating on a kid who would have been the same age as the brother he never met.

“If it’s any consolation, you won’t have to make many more appearances. I’m planning to kill Dick Grayson soon.”

“Can’t be soon enough for me. Three years is too long for anybody to impersonate their _dead best friend_.” ‘Best friend’ was overstating things, maybe. They’d only known each other for a few months before Dick was gone. But they had definitely been getting there. Getting somewhere. And then that had happened, and he’d been the one called on to make sure Robin’s identity didn’t get made. “Damian looked really mad.”

A long silence. “He wouldn’t have agreed if he’d been informed—he’ll live. Your assistance has been appreciated as always, Mr. West.”

“Sure.” He sighs. “Now I’ve got to catch a plane to Switzerland and wash this stuff out of my hair. Let me know next time you need me. Preferably never.”

* * *

Jake doesn't go to the subway.

There are sudden blanks as he runs in the direction Damian had gone, but he still manages to track him down at a bus stop on the other side of the park. Instinct is a hell of a thing—he’d vaulted over a moving car, once, when his foster sister's cat had run into the street. It was like someone else had taken over and he was just watching. It had felt awesome in the moment... landing not so much, not even five years after literally breaking almost every bone in his body.

No time to think about that now. Damian is leaning against the brick wall of the Martha Wayne Memorial Community Center, his arms wrapped around himself. He looks smaller than he ever has before.

Jake stops next to him. “Hey,” he says. “Are you... okay?”

“I _hate_ him!”

“Whoa!” Jake catches Damian's arm and spins him around as he throws a punch at the brick. “Calm down, Daims!”

“I can't have anything without him interfering, anything! I can’t even walk around this town without constantly being reminded of perfect, perfect Grayson, and he’s not even...he’s never here so I can’t even compete with him! I wish he’d never been _born_!”

“Okay, okay,” Jake says, pushing away a few more punches. Damian kicks him in the shin, but without much force. “Ow,” Jake says, more to satisfy him and stop him from taking another swing at the wall than because it actually hurt.

Damian sighs raggedly, swiping his sleeve across his face quickly.

“He didn’t seem that bad?” Jake tries cautiously.

“You wouldn’t get it,” Damian mutters, dropping down to sit on the sidewalk.

Jake follows him more slowly, leaning back against the warm brick wall of the community center. The sun is starting to set now, and the shadows in Gotham are lengthening rapidly, but the building still holds the heat of the day. “Probably not.”

“You’re going to miss your train,” Damian points out.

“I thought I’d stay and make sure you don’t miss your bus,” Jake replies, and Damian looks away, jabbing a small stick into a crack in the sidewalk. “Look, you have to go home sometime. Your dad’s going to be worried about you.”

“Bruce? Not likely. I’m just…” He shrugs. “Just some kid who lives in his house. He’s too busy with—with his work to pay any attention to what I’m doing except when he decides to pull something like that.” He turns back to Jake with a much more calculating look than anyone his age should be experienced in using. “I’m not going home tonight. I need you to help me get a hotel.”

Jake blinks. “Okay, A, no, B, that’s basically kidnapping—”

“Not if I _ask_ you to do it, obviously.” Damian rolls his eyes.

“That’s how it’s going to look to everyone else! Besides, _I’m_ not even old enough to rent a hotel room!”

Damian silently reaches into a pocket of his jeans and hands Jake a plastic card.

“Daims...Daimian, please explain why you have a fake driver’s license that says I’m nineteen.”

“...In case I needed one?”

“That was not the part that needed explaining…” Jake sighs. “Look, here’s your bus.” Damian doesn’t move as the bus rounds the corner. “Look, I know you don’t want to go home, but I’m not going to help you kidnap yourself and I’m not going to leave you on the street, so if you don’t get on that bus I’m going to carry you on.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would.” Hopefully Damian wouldn’t make him prove this, as carrying heavy objects hadn’t been his strong suit for a long time. “I will and everyone will see it and it’ll be all over Twitter by the end of the night.”

“Fine, have it your way.” Damian stands up slowly as the bus stops in front of the community center.

Jake waves to him as the bus pulls away. Damian flips him off through the back window—British style, with a backwards v-sign.

Weird kid. Weird family. Weird city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I've realized that maybe I should be tagging Young Justice/Teen Titans on this too...I wasn’t meaning to hide that, I just wasn’t sure about it since nobody from those groups has more than brief appearances. In other news, I also have a more definite plan for Tim than ‘I guess I’ll stick him in here somewhere’ although he still will take a while to appear.


	5. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m glad people have liked this story so far! It’s my first time in several years writing a story in a more widely read fandom, so I was nervous ^^;; This chapter took a while longer to finish because I had to solidify my outline first, so hopefully future updates will be quicker. If this thing doesn’t get away with me, it should take between 15-20 chapters to complete.

Damian slams the shot glass down on the bar, resting his chin on his hand. “See, the problem is that he hardly even notices me!” He sighs. “Get me another one of these.”

“You’ve had like four…”

“I can _handle_ my espresso, Jake!”

Jake sighs. “Can I get another espresso shot?” he asks reluctantly. The barista nods equally reluctantly, but clearly doesn’t understand his silent cry for help.

Damian’s been touchy ever since the run-in with his brother in Gotham. Jake doesn’t understand all of the particulars, since the Wayne family history is convoluted and hard to research, but the reasoning behind Damian’s resentment of Grayson seems pretty clear, although Jake thinks he’s being a bit over-dramatic about it. In Damian’s view, at least, Grayson is the favorite, and it’s his fault that Bruce doesn’t have any attention to spare for Damian even when Grayson is abroad at school.

It took Damian almost two weeks to get over the perceived betrayal of Jake refusing to rent a hotel for him in Gotham, and now that they’re back on speaking terms again he’s refused to meet up anywhere around his hometown.

Lately, they’ve taken to hanging out at a small coffee shop and diner near Jake’s foster home in Metropolis. It’s not a very wealthy area of town, so Jake had been worried the first time he brought him to his neighborhood, but Damian hasn’t ever said a word about the surroundings. Jake has even managed to get him to calm down with the black credit card somewhat, although Damian doesn’t quite seem to understand why yet.

“I’m cutting you off after this,” Jake says firmly, taking the espresso shot from the barista and sliding it over to Damian. Damian tosses it back instantly and Jake winces at the mere thought before sipping slowly at his iced tea. “Don’t you have an espresso machine at home?”

“Alfred won’t let me near it.”

“So you’re using me to get your fix? You’re cold, Damian.”

Damian makes a small huff that Jake has figured out is about as close as he normally gets to laughing. “I bought a Keurig a couple months ago, but Alfred got to the package before I could smuggle it up to my room.”

“So.” Jake wonders why he keeps wading into the turbulent and mysterious waters of the Wayne family relations. “Clearly Alfred pays attention to you, then?”

“Well. Yes.” Damian flicks the empty shot glass so that it slides into the other empty ones lined up on the counter with a clink. “Alfred’s great. He tries really hard, I know—I’ve seen him browsing the internet to figure out what kids my age are supposed to like. But I’m not like ‘kids my age’. And Alfred is...Alfred. Not Bruce.”

“So when is the last time you actually talked to Bruce, then?”

Damian shrugs. “What is there to talk about? Him sending Grayson after me? _That_ would go well.” He kicks at the bar with one leather sneaker; Jake catches a glimpse of a designer label and tries not to wince at the idea of putting shoes more expensive than Gotham’s average rent on a ten-year-old. No wonder he feels like nobody really pays attention to him, even if he does have more money than he knows what to do with.

“It doesn’t have to be that,” Jake says. “Just pick something. Anything—he’s not going to notice you if you don’t make him. I don’t know, tell him you want a dog, or something.”

“A dog…” Damian smiles a little. “Hm. I’ll take it under consideration.”

“Great. Now come on, let’s go play some board games.”

* * *

“Alright, we have Stratego, Risk, Ca—what are you doing up there?”

“You take all these?” Damian asks, picking up one of the prescription bottles he’s found on top of the cabinets above Jake’s desk.

“Uh, yes, now get down from there before you break my laptop.” Jake sweeps Damian off the desk and sets him on the floor again. Of course, Damian would have had plenty of time to react if he had wanted to, but he finds he really doesn’t.

He can barely remember the last time anyone had touched him before he ran into Jake at the Metropolis zoo. Maybe a few months before then, when he’d brought his spring report card back to the Manor—Alfred had made much of it, of course, despite his imperfect performance, and Bruce had even given him an awkward pat on the shoulder that he had immediately shrugged off.

He had thought he preferred people leaving him alone. Told himself he didn’t need attention.

It had seemed better than admitting it hurt to want it so much.

“Daims, are we playing or what?” Jake says. He has the Stratego board laid out across his bed, since his room is too small for anything else—even the desk barely fits, and Jake has to climb over the bed when he wants to access his tiny balcony. Damian quickly sits across from him. “You know,” Jake says, “I get this feeling that you always want to play long strategy games because you think I’m going to forget what my plan is halfway through.”

“You know,” Damian echoes, “ _I_ get this feeling that you are trying to make excuses for always losing to me. As you are about to once again.”

“Well, let’s find out about that.”

Damian’s done his best to learn about Jake over the past couple months—it’s important for friends to know things about each other. That’s what he’s read, anyway. This is the first time he’s had any reason or opportunity to put it into practice.

This is what Damian knows so far.

Jake Larking is around seventeen, as far as anyone knows. Jake isn’t his real name, of course: it was given to him at the hospital, since ‘John Doe’ had seemed too formal to use for a teenager. He picked ‘Larking’ when he was released to a foster home after two years of watching nature documentaries in his hospital room.

He goes to a public high school in Metropolis, where he has few friends and barely achieves passing grades. He has a fascination with Gotham, which shows poor judgement, but that, like his school performance, is probably explained by the massive head injury he sustained in the traffic accident five years ago that put him in the hospital.

He enjoys science fiction and fantasy, including something called a ‘Khaleesi’ from a ‘Game of Thrones’ which he had refused to explain further when Damian asked about it. And, as Damian has discovered today, he apparently takes a number of medications prescribed by a Metropolis hospital known for treating meta-humans, the same one he had spent two years in.

He is also fairly decent at strategy games.

But Damian doesn’t plan on letting him figure that out.

Two hours later, Jake leans back with a sigh, staring at the Catan board that Damian has taken complete control of for the second time that afternoon. “This is so unfair. Next time we’re going to the arcade and finding out if you’re as good at Mario Kart as you are at this.”

Damian smirks. It had actually been close today, but Jake doesn’t know that. “Damian Wayne, thirty-seven. Jake Larking...zero.”

“Excuse you, I have won like...three entire times,” Jake grumbles, dumping all the pieces back into the box. “Run along home now, okay? I have an essay due in history tomorrow.”

“I could write it for you,” Damian suggests. It would be more interesting that his own assignments, although probably not much more challenging.

“Yeah, I haven’t fallen far enough that I’m going to make a fourth grader do my homework for me,” Jake laughs. “Even if you are a tiny genius or whatever. I’ll see you next week, okay?” He pulls Damian across the bed for a quick selfie of the two of them, then sets him on the floor by the door and nudges him towards the stairs.

“What, I don’t get a coffee for the road?”

“Don’t push it, Daims.” Jake swipes at Damian with his history textbook and laughs when he dodges it easily. “See you!”

Damian grabs his backpack from the floor and hurries down the stairs, sliding down the banister from the second landing.

“Bye, Damian!” Jake’s foster mother calls from the kitchen as he passes through the living room, and he waves at her quickly before he lets himself out. She hasn’t recognized him as the heir to the biggest fortune in Gotham yet, and neither of them have told her; it’s a very strange feeling to have someone who thinks of him as totally normal, but kind of nice.

Things are looking up.

Now if only he could get through to Bruce.

* * *

“So I have good news and bad news,” Damian says as Jake walks up to him in front of the arcade.

“News about...what?” Jake raises his eyebrows in confusion, handing Damian the coffee he’d picked up for him on the way. Hopefully he won’t notice that it only had two extra espresso shots in it instead of the four he had requested.

“What you were talking about last week,” Damian replies, then takes a sip of the coffee. He frowns. “You’re shorting me on espresso again.”

“Yeah, forgive me for not wanting to deal with you while you’re half espresso by body weight, not after you tore through my whole room messing with all my stuff,” Jake says—child-proof caps were definitely not Damian-proof caps, so he had spent an hour afterwards finding a safer hiding place for his meds.

Jake tries to think back to what Damian could mean about last week, then pulls his phone out to check his notes. His memory has been getting better lately, so his notes on his activities have been becoming less detailed, and there’s nothing to explain what Damian is talking about as he scrolls through except a line saying ‘We talked about his family again’ which is a pretty regular event. “Uh, fill me in?”

“You said I should ask for a dog,” Damian says.

“Oh.” He does vaguely remember tossing out that idea in passing. “And you...did?”

Damian smirks. “The good news is, I have a dog now,” he says, holding his phone out with one hand and taking another sip of the coffee.

Jake sits down next to him and takes the phone. “Whoa,” he says, staring at the photo on the screen. “Holy s—” A siren blares through his brain, screaming _YOU WILL NOT BE THE PERSON WHO TEACHES BRUCE WAYNE’S SON TO SWEAR!_ “—Holy samoyed, Daims, is that a dog or a monster truck?”

“He’s a Tibetan Mastiff,” Damian explains, taking the phone back and swiping to another photo of the massive flame-colored dog—it looks more like a smaller, jowlier lion than a canine. “He’s arriving from China in a few days. I’m going to name him Titus.”

“After…?”

“Titus Andronicus. Obviously.”

Jake sighs. “See, I knew you were going to say that, and I still asked. So what’s the bad news?”

“I went to ask Bruce about it, and I barely finished saying what I wanted before he just said to put it on the card,” Damian says.

“And this is bad?”

Damian shrugs, taking a long drink of the coffee. “I had an entire presentation planned out. I had infographics! I made an entire debate outline! I was…” He looks down at his shoes. “I was hoping to talk to him for more than thirty seconds.”

Jake pats his shoulder, then pulls his hand back as Damian jolts a little in surprise. “It’s progress, at least?” he says.

“I guess. Maybe he’ll have more of a reaction when he sees the bill.”

“Oh?”

“Titus was the most expensive dog I could find,” Damian explains. “With transportation and import fees he should end up costing Bruce around two hundred thousand.”

“...Yuan?” Jake says weakly.

“US.”

Jake feels a little faint at the thought. What Damian has just spent in a petty attempt to get a rise out of his father would be enough to buy a fixer-upper house in the suburbs of Metropolis, and he seems to care about the price as little as he cares about the cost of the fancy latte he’s drinking.

“Man, what I wouldn’t give sometimes to have your problems,” he says under his breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m obsessed with Tibetan Mastiffs, OK, I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity.


End file.
